442 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 16. 



few cases it has led him too far for the crea- 

 tion of the best impression on readers so 

 literal-minded and so ready to accept and 

 quote authority as teachers are. It is over- 

 eloquent to say: " The tides sweep back and 

 forth across the surface of the sea, and 

 alternately lash the shores with their crested 

 waves," or " The purple cloud is painted 

 with dust, and the sapphire sky is adamant 

 on wings." After all the efforts to drive 

 ' burning mountains ' out of school geogra- 

 phies, it is disconcerting to read here about 

 ' floods of fire ' from volcanoes. In view 

 of the importance of the gentler processes 

 of nature, it is unfortunate to find in the 

 closing summary of the second essay a very 

 figurative expression regarding the three 

 great physiographic processes: " How fire, 

 earthquake and flood have been involved 

 in fashioning the land and sea . " The plain- 

 spoken teacher will have difficulty here in 

 distinguishing between poetry and prose. 



There are occasional briefer over-general- 

 ized statements that must raise unnecessary 

 questions in the teacher's mind. In men- 

 tioning the tides, the apparent diurnal rota- 

 tion of the moon around the earth is worded: 

 ' As the moon revolves about the earth 

 from east to west.' A little later, it is 

 said: "The seas are heated under the 

 tropics;" but schoolmasters are the very 

 persons who know that the tropics and the 

 torrid zone are not one and the same. The 

 surface currents of the ocean are referred 

 entirely to convectional movement in the 

 ocean itself; no surface cui-rents being as- 

 cribed to the winds ; and it is said that 

 " all surface currents drift eastward in going 

 towards the poles;" although this is wide 

 open to qualification. It is inconsistent 

 with the teachings of modern physics to 

 speak of the ' flow of . . . heat from the 

 fiery globes of space.' 



The corrections of small things is a vexa- 

 tious matter. It is little less than a nui- 

 sance to the author to have to stop for so 



small a trifle as the choice between ' under 

 the tropics ' and ' within the tropics.' This 

 distracts him fi-om the main line of thought 

 along which he is constructing his essay. 

 Minute corrections call for mental charac- 

 teristics that are pettj' in comparison with 

 the creative abilitj^ that produces the essay 

 itself; and from an author as independent 

 and original as Major Powell self-correction 

 of these relatively trifling verbal matters is 

 hardly to be expected. Yet it wiU be un- 

 fortunate if the editing of the future mono- 

 graphs does not involve such revisions as 

 will reduce their inconsistencies to a mini- 

 mum ; for when teachers discover that they 

 can take exception to certain parts of then- 

 text, their confidence in the rest of it is 

 weakened. They have not as a rule much 

 sense of perspective in these matters ; and, 

 as with book-keepers, a little error is in 

 their opinion about as dangerous as a great 

 one. They are confii-med in this habit of 

 thought hy the character of the contests, 

 of which they are frequent witnesses, that 

 grow out of the rivahy of publishers and 

 the strife of book agents. Knowing tliis, 

 the best way to prevent the confirmation of 

 the habit is to give it no opportunitj' for 

 practice. Even though the personality of 

 the author be in a measure lost, it is best to 

 scrutinize very carefully all books intended 

 for school teachers, and exclude fi-om them 

 every statement and phrase that will dis- 

 tract the reader from the essential line of 

 thought and set him to differing from the 

 author on matters of subordinate value. 

 For this purpose an experienced book agent 

 makes a most useful proof-reader ; and his 

 services should be secured, if possible, by 

 those who are acting for the National 

 Geographic Societj^ in the supervision of 

 these monographs. His advice will be found 

 very serviceable to authors whose previous 

 practice in writing has been on essaj'S for 

 scientific journals and governmental reports. 

 Haevaed University. W. M. Davis. 



